ABSTRACT
In Baudelaire’s poem “To a Passer-by,” the fleeting beauty, appearing as a lightening flash in the night, would be a monumental leitmotif that reverberates in the works of Paul Morand and his Japanese and Chinese followers. It tells of a chance encounter between the dandy/flâneur and the modern girl/ flâneuse. The modern girl is the symbolic Other whom the dandy yearns to catch sight of in his wandering route through the metropolis till eternity, just for the enchanting glance that will grant him his rebirth. Gazing boldly back at him, the modern girl is more titillating than a traditional object of desire that remains modest and passive. Thus, with her returned gaze indicating that man is nothing but her “Gigolo,” as discussed in Chapter 1, she is adopting, and thus reversing, the dandy’s role as womanizer. The cover of the October 1934 issue of The Women’s Pictorial features a short-haired modern girl in a man’s suit with a scarf for tie, indicating how the modern girl’s cross-dressing was attracting public attention at the time (Figure 2.1).1 Two of Guo Jianying’s cartoons in 1934 also depict the modern girl in a man’s suit. In Figure 2.2, the modern girl, wearing a man’s suit and tie and carrying a stick, walks into a lady’s room and startles another modern girl.2 In Figure 2.3, a modern girl-cum-painter, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, a bow-tie with a scarf hanging down, and trousers, is introducing, in a calm and matter-of-fact way, her naked female model to a man, who stands in a rigid posture, completely stunned and speechless.3 When the modern girl behaves like men, she stirs up gender trouble.
